Griffin Firewave sound card.

mr2mac · 10-10-2006, 04:38 AM

Hey there,

http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/firewave/

Just bought one of these sound cards and it works beautifully great sound quality. But i noticed when my mac mini is in sleep mode and in off the power on LED is still on the soundcard.

is there any way to put the firewire port to sleep when in sleep mode? Or when off?

Hope you guys can help.

cheers

Bugbyte · 10-10-2006, 01:41 PM

Same problem exists for the USB bus. The mini supplies power to the bus while asleep. People have gotten around that by using a USB hub with a power selector switch for USB. For firewire, the only thing I can think of is to cut the power wire in the cable and use a relay to close the circuit when the car is turned on.

I don't know if that would make it difficult to wake up the sound card or if it would cause some kind of crash to the Mini, though.

pepsibobby · 10-10-2006, 03:44 PM

well once its figured out im buying one, right now i have my one output going to all speakers and the sub and it sounds like garbage. lol.

Jirka Jirout · 10-10-2006, 03:59 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by mr2mac

is there any way to put the firewire port to sleep when in sleep mode? Or when off?

Not without diving deep into the system or hacking the FireWire cable (some sort of switch on the + line).

mr2mac · 10-10-2006, 05:19 PM

Yeah, might have to try the relay route running from the ignition, it not that complex. Just thought there was a software route. I'm new to Macs and indeed Pc's. thanks for advice chaps

www.workingcars · 10-11-2006, 04:25 PM

Off topic a bit.... I'm in croydon... Where are you...???

I run my sound through the head unit itself and have no problem with audio....

What are the advantages of having a sound card if you still have a head unit...??? I understand what they are if you don't, but would of thought a headunit is a better choice for audio control in a car running amplifiers...

mr2mac · 10-11-2006, 04:30 PM

Im in dulwich,

Removed head unit completely, with the soundcard you can have 5.1 surround sound or what ever config you want.

Your not far then.

Sharkbite86 · 10-19-2006, 06:09 PM

why not just get a powered hub for firewire and plug it into, say a P1900? I think you can get hubs for firewire :/ .

Sharkbite86 · 10-19-2006, 06:18 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by www.workingcars

I run my sound through the head unit itself and have no problem with audio....

What are the advantages of having a sound card if you still have a head unit...??? I understand what they are if you don't, but would of thought a headunit is a better choice for audio control in a car running amplifiers...

Well I think you end up with better sound in the end when using amps and a sound card. With a headunit all the audio coming from your computer is going though a stereo speaker wire. That stereo audio gets converted to many other channels to power all the speakers in your car. When you do that you looses sound quality (if only just a little bit).

However, with a sound card you can get 5.1 sourround sound coming straight from the computer itself. Plus I think it looks cleaner, and you can skip a step (sorta).

but maybe im just full of hot air

.

JuMpMaN6235 · 10-20-2006, 02:52 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Bugbyte

Same problem exists for the USB bus. The mini supplies power to the bus while asleep. People have gotten around that by using a USB hub with a power selector switch for USB. For firewire, the only thing I can think of is to cut the power wire in the cable and use a relay to close the circuit when the car is turned on.

I don't know if that would make it difficult to wake up the sound card or if it would cause some kind of crash to the Mini, though.

could you also, use a USB hub without a power switch, but instead just hack the usb cable that connects to the hub and add a switch?

inov8tr · 10-22-2006, 03:47 AM

Yeah you could do that with the USB hub or go for a more creative solution as I did. I found that the external power does not power the processor in the USB hub, this requires power from the USB coming from the computer. Therefore you can cut the trace and separate the power so that the external power supply only powers your ports and the computer continues to power the processor inside the USB hub.

http://inov8tr.blogs.com/scooby/2006...b_solutio.html

As for the Firewave, I have decided to risk a little extra power drain than try to hack the firewire cable or the firewave. It seems that the power drain would be minimal as the Firewave isn't doing anything when the computer is sleeping. I just installed everything today, so time will tell if there is going to be an issue.

-David
CarMac Install 98% Complete
http://inov8tr.blogs.com/scooby/

www.workingcars · 10-22-2006, 10:31 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Sharkbite86

Well I think you end up with better sound in the end when using amps and a sound card. With a headunit all the audio coming from your computer is going though a stereo speaker wire. That stereo audio gets converted to many other channels to power all the speakers in your car. When you do that you looses sound quality (if only just a little bit).

However, with a sound card you can get 5.1 sourround sound coming straight from the computer itself. Plus I think it looks cleaner, and you can skip a step (sorta).

but maybe im just full of hot air

.

I understand the reasoning behind it, but i sometimes look at it that it is always good to have something there with out the nned for the mac...

I use the audio out into the headunit and control everything soundwise through that, so i can in fact take the mac out at anytime if i need to and still have music capability...

I would love to be able to ditch the headunit but i do run satnav through it as a must, so will not be doing it for a while...

I'm sure i have seen external powered firewire cards at a computer fair, so i would go that route through the P1900 for power as well....

Let me know how you get on with it...!

inov8tr · 11-02-2006, 05:29 PM

I had some technical questions about my Firewave and decided to e-mail Griffin Tech support. I am overall very happy with the Firewave, but there are a couple of little things that may have swayed me away from it if I knew about them. Here are the questions and response from Griffin:

Q -- 1. The Firewave software returns to default settings when computer restarts. Is there a solution for this?

A -- Unfortunately no.

Q -- 2. When you open the Apple MIDI utility the Firwave software settings seem to go back to default.

A -- The AMS in OSX does this and it cannot be changed

Q -- 3. Is there access to any type of individual channel EQ within the Firewave or the software??

A -- There is not

Q -- 4. What is the command style window for??? Are there hidden commands that you can send to the unit???

A -- This is for hardware debugging, and comand line interface is not supported

Q -- 5. The Firewave stays powered when my Mac MIni is sleeping, is there an internal command that would tell the unit to power down when the Mac is in sleep mode???

A -- The FireWave will stay on as long as the FireWire Port is providing power.

Hope this helps everyone out a little bit in their buying decisions. Once again the Firewave is a great product and I am enjoying it in my car. Hopefully Griffin will make some software revisions to fix some of the little quirks.

mr2mac · 11-03-2006, 01:29 AM

Hey,

You are right the firewave doesn't draw much juice at all when asleep, so doesn't create any problems. But it is annoyinig that it can't remember its last settings, but never mind the sound quality is great. I used a cheap usb soundcard before and i had trouble with noise, now all is good.